Voyage d’Hermès is the latest from perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena at Hermès. Reportedly he wanted the unisex fragrance to say “It’s calling to me” rather than “It reminds me”; that is, Voyage d’Hermès — unlike the Jardin series — is not intended to evoke any particular place or time. Hermès is calling Voyage a fresh musky woods, but so far as I know they have not released a list of notes — presumably in keeping with the intention that “this perfume would not smell of a kind of wood, a flower, a particular raw material, but of the unknown in all its glory”.¹

In the event, Voyage d’Hermès does not remind me of any specific place, but it does remind me of other Jean-Claude Ellena fragrances, so much so that it’s tempting to see it as a voyage through his career, with nods to the heritage of Hermès along the way. The opening is green-ish citrus, rather dry and very tart — think of the grapefruit + lime peel citrus in the opening of Un Jardin Sur le Nil (minus the mango) or Eau de Pamplemousse Rose. In Voyage, the citrus sparkles over a generous dose of black pepper, and possibly some ginger as well, and I’m probably dreaming but I would swear that for a moment or two, there’s a flash of green tea (Bvlgari Eau Parfumée au Thé Vert). Whatever might be in there, the early stages are lively…

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